


the fugitive heart

by arriviste



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-06 06:54:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20502734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arriviste/pseuds/arriviste
Summary: Perhaps Finduilas’s real tragedy is that she had no mother, no sister, no woman-friend to say to her,Do you really love him? Would you still love this Túrin if he was less tragic, less doomed, less blood-stained? Do you love him, or do you only long to comb his tangled hair?





	the fugitive heart

**Author's Note:**

> _\- love is not love_   
_which alters when it alterations finds -_

Finduilas Faelivrin, the spring maiden of Nargothrond, the last sprig of new life in the house of Arafinwë-across-the-Sea for an Age. Finduilas the Frail, she came to be known, and some meant her slenderness, her waning as her love and Doom overcame her; and others meant her wandering heart, that did not stay where it was pledged but went abroad in the night.

Perhaps they were pleased, then, at the symmetry of her end: her abandonment in turn by the man she loved in her direst need, the spear that pierced her through her chest and to a great tree, fixing her heart in place.

-

There are different versions of her tale, but not enough linger on the girl who saw her lover go to war, and still knew him when he came back so long after, grey-haired and wizened as the Eldar never should be, scarred and scourged by the tortures of long slavery under the lashes of the Enemy. She saw him, and she alone knew him: and if this was a fairy tale, and not a history, her kiss would break the spell, her love restore him to the beauty and wholeness of his youth, his immortal birthright from Eru Iluvatar himself. Her eyes never leave his face, never go to the man at his shoulder, tall and glorious and bearing Morwen Eledhwen’s beauty like a blade.

History is not so kind.

-

An early version has Túrin the tall always watching her from afar. She troubles his thoughts, the gold-and-ivory girl, the light in dark Nargothrond’s corridors: the slim, the slender, the slip-away girl. 

In this version he turns his eyes to her again and again, then turns them away. He wishes to sleep without dreams, to be wiped clean of longing, of war, of loss. On darker nights what he wishes is to be free of guilt and friendship, so his dreams of spring can be made flesh, so he can seek without shame and – perhaps – find. But he will not betray a friend again, he tells himself. He speaks coldly to her, but his eyes are hot.

This is a story about watching. Túrin watches her, and Gwindor watches them both. As she was the only one to see him and know him, Gwindor is the only one to see her and know her. He watches feeling move across her face like clouds across the sky. She doesn’t brighten for Túrin. In his presence she darkens, she dampens, Gwindor’s gleaming girl Faelivrin. 

This, perhaps, is love. It betrays love, the new one and the old one.

They watch her, but she says nothing, reveals nothing. She is not Túrin, to sigh loudly in the corridors, to put a hand to his forehead as though overwhelmed by fate. She is Orodreth’s daughter, and she keeps her secrets, but she cries at night, and during the day she is ever fairer, ever paler, ever more slender. 

When she plays her harp, her eyes stay lowered, and in their glorious deeps her secrets drown. 

-

The story whitens over time.

Or darkens; it depends on how you read it. It is no longer a story of eyes following, following, of silence kept, honor binding, tongues held, secrets festering.

In this version, Finduilas speaks. She speaks for Túrin, again and again. He does bold deeds, but the Elves of Nargothrond fear that he will draw Morgoth’s attention to them, and she speaks against their whispers. The Elves of Nargothrond, of course, have never been known for bold deeds. Not since the days of Finrod Felagund, when a fragment of a fragment followed Finrod into the dark, and died there; not since Curufin son of Fëanor smiled his sharp smile, and lifted up his voice, and spoke of war and ruin, of the death he had seen, the death he had dealt, and opened the doors of their hearts to fear and to doubt. 

In this story Túrin’s eyes do not turn to her. He is glad of her sweetness, but all he can think of is Beleg, Beleg who loved him, Beleg who he loved. Beleg who died in his arms with his eyes full of hurt and blood on his mouth.

Túrin kissed that mouth. 

He calls Finduilas his sister, in place of the one he lost. She calls him brother. The people of Nargothrond wonder at the whiteness and delicacy of her face as, day by day, the skin stretches tighter and tighter over the elegant bones, and her eyes burn brighter and brighter with something suppressed. She is a wicker-woman with eyes of flame. 

\- 

They are mirrors of each other. Gwindor was once tall and dark, with eyes of a clear, glaucous blue so piercing that his mother will dream of them before he’s born, will name him for them.

When he comes back to Nargothrond, his fair face is aged and marred, the long mane of dark hair a ragged mass of white: nothing of him is as it was but his eyes. He will lift them to Orodreth’s daughter when the guards of Nargothrond hold him at bay with swords and spears, and she will put her hand over her heart as though she has been run through.

On her hand will be a silver ring.

Túrin looks like Gwindor once did. Everyone remarks on that. He is the man who looks like an elf, and Gwindor is the elf who looks like a man. Yet he _is_ a man, and if he is Gwindor’s lost past, Gwindor is his inexorable future.

How could anyone blame Finduilas for confusion at the abysm of time that opens before her feet? For the dark unluck that Morgoth has spun around Túrin, which reaches out to ruin every life he touches, to pull every pattern into its gravity?

This is how a heart of an Elf-maiden alters course, this is how it goes astray: it is caught in the net of something greater than itself.

-

Perhaps Finduilas’s real tragedy is that she had no mother, no sister, no woman-friend to say to her, _Do you really love him? Would you still love this Túrin if he was less tragic, less doomed, less blood-stained? Do you love him, or do you only long to comb his tangled hair?_

When you can laugh at tragedy, you can cut through its webs.

-

Out of loyalty, the first story says, Túrin fought his guilty love. Finduilas fought hers. Gwindor watched them both, and said nothing, and his heart twisted and twisted.

Yet his love for her was greater than his pain, and he spoke to Finduilas like the brother she didn’t have. Gwindor’s love allowed him to release her from her guilt to happiness, but he warned her that he saw no happiness for her with Túrin, only a shadow: and Finduilas said nothing.

He spoke to Túrin like the friend he had slain, and his love for Túrin allowed him to wish him well: and Túrin did not deny that he loved Orodreth’s daughter, but said that his love for Gwindor would always stay him from acting, and that he knew the only morning-gift he could bring give a bride was sorrow.

This is a perfect triangle of pain, the sort of story that Elves like to tell. There is no happy ending here, no future. Love binds each of them to each, backwards and forth, strangling, but all of them behave well, and none seek to hurt. Finduilas’s heart may have shifted like the sunlight, but still Gwindor is her dearest friend and her pity for his hurts flows out of her like blood: it isn’t only her love for Túrin Blood-Stained that bleeds her white. 

The second story says, yes, she came to love Túrin, but he loved her only as a sister, like a golden tree, a distant perfect thing, a queen. The guilt is all hers, and all the betrayal. He did not aspire to the heights. He does not even see her love: he does not see _her_. Only Gwindor does, and this time, when Gwindor speaks, Finduilas answers.

“You see imperfectly,” she tells Gwindor, and her words are ice. “You see, but you don’t understand; you say you wish to free me from shame, but you shame me more deeply by speaking. I love you still, but a love greater than that and greater than I has taken me against my will. You would release me to go to him, but he doesn’t want me; the release you would give me is not the one I would seek, if only I could.”

Perhaps Gwindor cannot imagine that one could see her and not love her, his light shining on the snow, the gleaming girl of the dark halls. He has been watching, but perhaps he sees less well than Gwindor of the first tale. Perhaps he is only trying to open her eyes while she is trying to open his. 

She speaks to shield Túrin from blame, he says; for why else would Túrin linger in her presence?

“He finds comfort in my company,” she says; “that is all he needs of me. You both have your needs! What of me? You claim you mean to be kind, but you force me to admit that the man I love does not love me; and then you say I lie. You pierce me twice over.”

It is strange that the only words of Finduilas the histories give so clearly should be so bitter. 

Gwindor tells her she must know that Túrin loves her. Women always know.

This is a far less perfect triangle, and it makes a worse song. It is more tangled, the shadings darker, and blame pools away from Túrin to collect first in one corner, then another, and back again, depending on who is reading the tale. Gwindor loves Finduilas, and she loves Túrin. The triangle does not close, and the unities are less perfect, the meanings less certain. Is Gwindor still seeing clearest, seeking what is best for those he loves, or does he see what Finduilas does, and seek to wound? Finduilas knows that the only space in Túrin’s heart she might find would be through pity, and that she will not take. Does she see to the heart of things, or is she the one who is blind? 

If he loves her, Túrin himself doesn’t know it. He sees none of this shadowplay at all.

-

Every history agrees on what happens next: the burning black sword, the great bridge, the coming of the dragon. The golden girl carried off in chains. Gwindor dies in Túrin’s arms, as Beleg did, because Túrin has a black touch, and everything he loves must turn to ash.

With his last breath, Gwindor tells him that he loves him, but that very love has cost him everything he had. Now he exacts his price. Rescue for rescue: Túrin for Finduilas. He saved Túrin once, and now Túrin must save _her_, though it cost him everything in turn.

Túrin kisses him.

This is the betrayal the stories should linger on. She is still screaming, Finduilas daughter of Orodreth, who is otherwise marked only by silence. Perhaps this is where her voice truly enters the text, pierces it through. She cries for him, and Túrin does not go; she disappears, and he does not follow.

Some versions weight him with heavy chains to excuse his stillness. He was in the grip of the dragon’s golden eyes: he could not go! He was told that his mother and sister would be lost, if he went after frail Finduilas: how _could_ he go!

How could he?

How _could_ he?

Once he is freed, he could follow. He does not. He will not. He never will, as many times as the story is told, as different as the versions may be. He hears Finduilas calling for him on the wind, but he does not go to her; he weighs her life and his promise against the dragon’s lies, and chooses with his eyes open. Yes, Túrin thinks it a real choice, and not truth against lie, but even were it truth for truth, Finduilas for Morwen and for Niënor, it is still a choice that is made, and Túrin who will make it. Finduilas against everything else Túrin has left.

-

He closes his eyes. He closes his heart. He lets her slip away, the waning girl, the wailing girl, into nothing.

\- 

Finduilas would be a lover to him, but Túrin sees her as a sister. Niënor is his sister, but Túrin looks at her and sees a lover. 

For Finduilas, Gwindor and Túrin stood side by side. For Túrin, Finduilas and Niënor fuse together: they are one being in the moment he first sees the golden girl sprawled on the great green mound. Then he blinks, and they separate. He is still too late for the girl under the grass. He always will be.

Niënor offers him, perhaps, the oblivion he dreamed of once in Nargothond. What would it mean to Túrin the Blood-Stained to be someone without a past, without a family, without a story? Without a lover, unsnared in promises, unmarked by betrayals, fresh as the dawn? He looks at Niënor and sees a long dreamed-of oblivion. 

He looks at her and does not see her, and she looks back at him and does not see him. Like sleepwalkers towards a cliff they move towards each other, each going blindly into the mirror towards their doom. 

-

She lies under the green grass, say the men of Brethil, and her grave is always green. Turin’s grave, when it finds him, will always be bare. Niënor will have none.

What is shed is only the flesh, and the spirit is immortal. The Eldar have been promised this. Where does she go, Finduilas the Frail? Is it truly she who calls to Turin on the wind, who follows him always calling as he plunges like a wild man over hill and dale, or has she already left this shore?

Surely if anyone was to haunt him, it would be Gwindor the Faithful, with his grey eyes burning holes in his wasted face. That is love, perhaps: love like a weapon, that for love’s sake is wielded, that with love’s knowledge knows precisely where in a loved one’s heart to strike. 

Let us say that they both haunt him, that he never knows peace, even in his new house in his new life, with his hand on his wife’s swelling stomach; that he is always waiting for fate to catch up to him. _Though it cost you everything._ Are they watching, that day beside the waterfall, when the black sword he has used on Beleg and on Brandir finds its final sheath in his own belly? Perhaps they are pleased to see Túrin pierced through at last the way she was, the way he was. Perhaps once the curse is done, they can rest; perhaps they fade away on the wind.

-

But the histories say that Finduilas was gentle, Gwindor kind. Their bindings were those made of love, and so too were their wounds, their weapons. We can imagine a better future for them, one in a kinder land, where everything is as beautiful as spring, and the days are long and bright, and the only snow to be seen is at the peak of Mount Oiolossë, where it gleams white, white, white. 

This is the kinder story, where Gwindor is young again, and his black hair falls once more to his waist. His body is tall and lean, his eyes bright. He sees Finduilas Faelivrin coming over the hill, and he loves her still, the gold-and-ivory girl. She seems again as brilliant to him as sunshine on the snow, as white and sparkling as Ivrin itself, as pure. 

Her hand rises to cover her heart when she sees him, but there is no longer a wound beneath it, no sucking mouth draining her of life and colour. 

_This_ is how he should have returned to her from the war. _This_ is how she should have met him. This is Valinor, and that life is a dark dream now, left behind, wiped clean of old pain and old betrayal, and all the shadows have rolled away: they can start anew, afresh. They have known pity for each other as well as love, and with these tools there might be perfect forgiveness, perfect understanding. They can see each other clearly. They are kind.

-

They will remember her on the faraway shore. The men of Brethil will call her green grave Haudh-en-Elleth, and they will tell a version of her story. One version will be told in Valinor; another still in the House of Elrond, where Túrin will be honoured.

Ages later, Adrahil of Dol Amroth will call his daughter Finduilas, and she will marry and bear sons, but she will fade away nonetheless, growing daily whiter and whiter, thinner and thinner, sick for the sound of the sea, and he will wonder if he laid a shadow on her at her birth.

People will look at the stories and ask questions. Where is Finduilas Faelivrin in the Lay of Leithian? Surely she was there in Nargothrond when Beren came, when Finrod left, when Celegorm and Curufin caged Luthien the Fair? She must have been; we know that she counters Gwindor’s prophecy of future shadow with the model of Beren, and Gwindor must tell her that there can be no such happy ending for any life that touches that of Túrin the Doomed, Túrin Blood-Stained. 

Where is Gil-galad Orodreth’s son, and why is he in neither that tale or hers? She dies, and he appears: they are never on the same stage at the same time. She must go before he can arrive, like Tilion following Arien, like two magnetic fields that repel each other. This is why some ask: how sure are we that she dies on that tree, that spear in her heart? We do not see it. We do not know it. We know only that they tell Túrin so, and perhaps this is what happens instead:

It is not Túrin, in the end, who lets Finduilas go. It is she who lets him fall, who slips through his fingers, who hears that he is coming at last and decides she will not be found. This is how she vanishes: not off the page, not beneath the earth, not with her heart’s blood draining into the soil and her voice into the wind, but under scales of armour, a gilded face-plate, a new name. She doesn’t leave history: she makes it, page upon page. The spear in her heart becomes the spear in her hand.

She is still bright, still radiant. Sun upon snow, a field full of stars.

-

In the histories we only see her in such brief flashes of light.

She is giving her hand to Gwindor to put a silver ring on it. 

She is lifting the golden cup of friendship.

She is playing a great harp. 

She is crying out to Túrin in travail as the Orcs carry her away. 

She is pierced to a tree with a spear. 

She is gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously drawing heavily from multiple different versions of the Narn: the Lays of Beleriand, The Silmarillion and the Children of Hurin versions the most.
> 
> Tumblr is [here](https://arrivisting.tumblr.com) but I am very shy and bad at using it!


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